Bomb Craters and Bodies As Gazans Evacuate Hospitals

AFP/APP

Gaza Strip: Columns of Palestinians, some sick and some wounded, made their way out of Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, walking for hours through the debris of war as they sought a new refugee.

The Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City had been the focus of an Israeli special forces operation for days. Instructions to evacuate were issued on Saturday, prompting the exodus of hundreds of patients who were displaced towards the supposedly safer south of the Palestinian territory.

“The streets were destroyed; there were bomb craters and a lot of decomposing bodies” near the hospital, said Samia al-Khatib, 45, who left Al-Shifa along with her husband and 15-year-old daughter. “There were scenes of horror—a real massacre,” she told AFP.

Some clutched makeshift white flags as they made their way between dead bodies and heavily armed Israeli soldiers flanked by tanks and armoured vehicles.

Along a road lined by destroyed buildings and charred vehicles, children walked barefoot, elderly men leant on canes, and the few who could afford it used horse-drawn carts to move south, where Israel has urged civilians to go.

One man carried his disabled daughter on his back. Another carried his injured daughter in his arms, a plaster cast on her tiny leg.